Seoul International Music Festival Opening Concert: Sinfonia Lahti

Seoul International Music Festival Opening Concert: Sinfonia Lahti 8PM TUE. 24th October, Concert hall, Seoul Arts Center 〈Program〉 Sirin Nah Festival Overture for Orchestra D. Shostakovitch Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107 (Cello Arto Noras) L. v. Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 Conductor dima Slobodeniouk, Cello Arto Noras, Sinfonia Lahti Lahti Symphony Orchestra, receiver of many awards including the Gramophone Awards, Cannes Classic Awards, Diapason d’Or, and MIDEM Classic, is considered one of the top orchestras in Northern Europe with their grand and exact sound, and their first concert in Korea is opening at the Seoul International Music Festival. Finland’s Lahti Symphony Orchestra will be performing on October 24, 2017, the opening day of 2017 Seoul International Music Festival, and there is a great amount of anticipation towards their meaningful program. Lahti Symphony Orchestra is famous for being the master of Sibelius music, and for their strong and detailed sound. Highly acclaimed as the “trailblazer with a difference”, they have created their program with songs that one would be sorry to miss. “Festival Overture for the Orchestra”, writted by Sirin Na, a young Korean composer, will be opening the 2017 Seoul International Music Festival. Sirin Na writes, “Festival is a celebration that is meant to be enjoyed by groups of people, and to enjoy together is to share something meaningful, such as delicious food or a fun game”. This piece, selected as the opening music for the opening ceremony, is deeply meaningful, containing the desire of Seoul international Music Festival to explore the spirit of the age through programs of tradition and innovation. Following this opening, Arto Noras, one of the top cellists in the world, and Lahti Symphony Orchestra will be playing Shostakovich Cello Concerto No1 In E-flat Major Op.107. Maestro Arto Noras’ cello collaboration on Shostakovich is a very rare program. We are very excited to witness how the maestro, being one the few living cellist who has actually played with Shostakovich, will surprise the audience with his excellent understanding of the music. L.V Beethoven Symphony No.7 in A Major, Op. 92 will be the finale of the opening ceremony, and it’s light and cheerful rhythm will remind us of dance music and the excited scenes of a festival. Conductor Dima Stobodeniouk will be presenting his excellent talents through this piece, which is an especially popular piece out of Beethoven’s symphonies. Sinfonia Lahti The Lahti Symphony Orchestra has been described as a ‘small-town wonder’. Its collaboration with the Swedish record company BIS was the first clear signal that its aspirations were no longer those of a provincial ensemble but were oriented towards the wider orchestral world, and the orchestra fulfilled many of its wildest dreams together with its principal conductor Osmo Vanska (1988? 2008). Since the autumn of 2008 until the spring of 2011 the orchestra’s artistic advisor ? and artistic director of the Sibelius Festival ? was Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Since the autumn of 2011 until the spring of 2016 Okko Kamu was the orchestra’s principal conductor and the artistic director of the Festival, and in the autumn of 2016 Dima Slobodeniouk began his tenure in these positions. In the early 1990s various goals were set: to start touring internationally, to acquire a new concert hall and, by means of unconventional projects, to build a reputation for the orchestra as a ‘trailblazer with a difference’. Since 2000 the orchestra’s home has been the Sibelius Hall, known for its excellent acoustic. Numerous awards for the orchestra’s recordings (including a Grand Prix du Disque 1993, Gramophone Awards in 1991 and 1996, Cannes Classical Awards in 1997 and 2001, the MIDEM Classical Award in 2006 and the Diapason d’Or de l’Annee in 2011) have also opened the doors to an international arena. The orchestra’s first major tour to Japan took place in 1999, and that year it also made its successful debut at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York. These successful performances gave rise to repeat invitations, and tour destinations have included the United States (January 2005) and Japan (2003, 2006 and 2015). Japanese critics chose the orchestra’s Tokyo performance of Sibelius’s Kullervo in 2003 as the year’s best classical performance in Japan. The orchestra has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the White Nights Festival in St Petersburg, twice at the BBC Proms in London and at six concerts in the Musikverein in Vienna. In addition, it has given concerts in China, France, Spain, Poland and Belgium, and its performances have been warmly received by the international press. The orchestra’s broad-minded attitude can also be inferred from the many exceptional recording projects that it has undertaken. Its first disc of Finnish hymns reached gold record status in about one month; overall, the orchestra now has seven gold records to its credit. Its soundtrack disc to the film Sibelius and its ABBA and Queen recordings together with the group Rajaton have all become platinum discs. Alongside the music of Sibelius, the core of the orchestra’s work has been its collaboration with Kalevi Aho, composer-in-residence since 1992: among the works Aho has composed for the orchestra are five symphonies. The orchestra has also recorded a major part of Aho’s extensive orchestral output. Without exception these recordings have been favourably received by the international press, as indeed have almost all of the discs in the orchestra’s close collaboration with BIS Records, which now extends to some seventy recordings. In the autumn of 2009, international sales of the orchestra’s BIS recordings passed the million mark. Artistic Directors of Lahti Symphony Orchestra 1951-1957 Martti Simila 1959-1978 Urpo Pesonen 1978-1984 Jouko Saari 1985-1988 Ulf Soderblom 1988-2008 Osmo Vanska 2008-2011 Jukka-Pekka Saraste 2011-2016 Okko Kamu 2016- Dima Slobodeniouk Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk In August 2015 Dima Slobodeniouk was announced as Principal Conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Sibelius Festival, a position he takes up from 2016/17 season. Lauded for his deeply informed and intelligent artistic leadership Slobodeniouk is also Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia since September 2013, a position he will combine with his new posts in Lahti. Combining his native Russian roots with his years of musical study in Finland Slobodeniouk draws on the powerful musical strengths of these countries. Dima Slobodeniouk also maintains a strong presence on concert podiums internationally. The 2015/16 season will see him guest conduct Orchestre National de Lyon, Gothenburg Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Hall, Lucerne Symphony, Iceland Symphony and as a regular guest he returns to Helsinki Philharmonic and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He will work with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Baiba Skride, Viktoria Mullova, Tine Thing Helseth, Anssi Karttunen, Ewa Podle?, Barbara Hannigan and Helena Juntunen. With his passions for a broad scope of repertoire he conducts Beethoven, Verdi, Mahler, Sibelius, Stravinsky to the modern, including works of Jonathan Harvey, the Catalan composer Benet Casablancas, and Magnus Lindberg which will feature the Spanish premiere of his cello concerto. He explores two song cycles of Unsuk Chin (‘Les Silences des Sirenes’ and ‘SnagS and Snarls’). In spring 2016 the Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia tours with Yefim Bronfman to Madrid and with Javier Perianes to Abu Dhabi. Passionate about working with young musicians of the future Slobodeniouk worked with student musicians of the 2015 Verbier Festival, and he begins a conducting initiative with Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia for a ten day period providing an opportunity for students to work on the podium with a professional orchestra. In 2015 saw the release of a CD of works of Lotta Wennakoski with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra for the Ondine label. Maintaining an active collaboration with BIS Records the Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund is presented on the BIS label conducted by Slobodeniouk with Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Slobodeniouk, Moscow-born, studied violin at the Central Music School under Zinaida Gilels and J. Chugajev continuing at the Conservatory’s Music Institute, Moscow in 1989 and at the Middle Finland’s Conservatory and the Sibelius Academy under Olga Parhomenko. In 1994, participated in the conductors class of Atso Almila. He continued his Sibelius Academy studies under the guidance of Leif Segerstam, Jorma Panula and Atso Almila. He has also studied under Ilya Musin and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Cello Arto Noras “With nearly 100 concerts over two weeks, you never know when the moments of magic will come. But one came Sunday in the opening concert in Kuhmo Church when Arto Noras played the Haydn Cello Concerto in C major, bringing serene lyricism to the second movement and a stunning technique to the third.” - New York Times Arto Noras is one of a handful of outstanding internationally acknowledged ＇cellists of his generation＇ recognised worldwide as an expressive, technically brilliant soloist and as an intense, sensitive chamber musician. He is one of Finland’s most celebrated instrumentalists where he is Founder and Artistic Director of the Naantali Music Festival, which celebrated its 30th Anniversary in 2011, and Chairman of the International Paulo Cello Competition which he founded in 1991. Recent engagements have seen him appearing with The Philadelphia Orchestra (Strauss’s “Don Quixote”: “Cello solos were played by veteran Finnish cellist Arto Noras, who is heard too rarely in the United States, and characterized Quixote more as an accident-prone poet than a buffoon - his tools being an effortless, touchingly demure legato. His big cadenza/soliloquy was lofty.” Philadelphia Inquirer ? June 7, 2010) and Rostropovich Festival in Moscow and he is a regular soloist at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico as well as the Pablo Casals Music Festival in Prades. This season will see him at the BBC Proms in London and next season he returns to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared with most of the world’s finest orchestras. Arto Noras＇ repertoire covers almost all the repertoire composed for his instrument including that by contemporary composers, some commissioned by himself, premiering, for example, Aulis Sallinen’s “Nocturnal Dances of Don Juan Quixote”, Segerstam’s Sixth Cello Concerto and Erik Bergman＇s Cello Concerto alongside working extensively with Krzysztof Penderecki. He has recorded extensively for the Finlandia label (Warner) in an extensive discography with orchestras that include the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Warsaw National Philharmonic with conductors such as Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Sakari Oramo, Markus Lehtinen, Paavo Berglund, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Krzysztof Penderecki. Arto Noras’ distinguished recital and chamber music work sees him regularly playing at the world’s great concert halls and festivals that include the Casals Festival in Prades (“Just as yesterday, Arto Noras cast a spell on the audience making the most of the softness and the delicacy of the instrument in the Andante… He has unmistakably the most silky and soul-stirring sound of all the cellists heard in Prades.” ResMusica, France ? August 2008), San Juan, Puerto Rico, Kumho Chamber Music Festival, Turku Music Festival, Seoul International Music Festival and his own Naantali Music Festival (“This cellist is truly awesome. His records didn’t prepare us for his tone, which seems surely the biggest heard since the days of Pablo Casals and Emmanuel Feuermann…” New York Daily News). On CD he has amassed wonderful reviews for his sonata recordings with pianists Bruno Rigutto (Beethoven, Faure, Franck, Debussy), Ralf Gothoni (Sallinen) and Juhani Lagerspetz (Brahms, Schumann) that have included this review from The Gramophone: “What a fine performer the Finnish cellist Arto Noras is. With his rich stream of tone and immaculate technical address, he cuts a commandingly articulate figure.” He was a member of the Helsinki Trio and a founder member of the Sibelius Academy Quartet and he continues to play with other groups of distinguished musicians. Arto Noras completed his studies with Yrjo Selin at the Sibelius Academy before studying with Paul Tortelier at the Paris Conservatoire where he gained the coveted Premier Prix diploma in 1964. Two years later there was a furore when he was only awarded second prize in the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow which, however, immediately opened his way to the most important concert halls in Europe as well as both North and South America where he has performed regularly ever since. In 1970 he was appointed Professor of Cello at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki where he remained until State Retirement age and he is currently Professor at the Hamburg Musik Hochschule. He is in considerable demand as a jurist including the Tchaikovsky, Casals and Cassado competitions and he is regularly asked to give master classes all over the world. Arto Noras was awarded the Danish Sonning Prize in 1967 and Finnish State music prize in 1972.